ARTICLES ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE BY DATE - PAGE 5

By Anna Nicolaou (Reuters) - China's massive pollution problems have given rise to a new force of environmental campaigners, different politically from middle class activists in the West and potentially more effective in tackling climate change, new research finds. In Europe, financial crisis has knocked environmental policy down the political agenda and populist movements see environmentalism as a hobby of European elites. Meanwhile in the United States, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks pushed energy security to the top of the political agenda.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration on Tuesday released an updated report on how a changing climate has touched every corner of the country, from oyster growers in Washington State to maple syrup producers in Vermont, and said that urgent action is needed. "Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present," it said in an update to the third National Climate Assessment. Some environmental and public health groups hailed the report as a possible "game changer" in building support for efforts to address climate change, in part because it makes the outcomes less abstract to many Americans.

Climate change is expected to bring more severe weather, increased crop yields and a longer Great Lakes shipping season to Illinois and the Midwest, the White House said Tuesday in its report on global warming. The report, which called out the region for higher-than-average greenhouse gas emissions, included specific projections for the Midwest that warned of noticeable changes to weather patterns that could affect agriculture and trade. The government report outlined short- and long-term implications and possible solutions to climate change nationally.

Redistribution of wealth Concerning the Affordable Care Act, politicians at every level can spit out numbers; some valid, some skewed. At the end of the day it really does not matter. The supposed goal is health insurance for everybody. If 35 million uninsured people become insured people, somebody has got to pay for it! If these new insured bodies don't have any money, then the ones who do have money will pay for it, one way or another. Obamacare is nothing but a huge redistribution of wealth and a vehicle for massive big government control of our lives.

MIAMI BEACH (Reuters) - Climate change is already impacting south Florida coastal communities, which could see a three-foot rise in sea level by the end of the century, a panel of officials and scientists testified at a Senate hearing on Miami Beach on Tuesday. "This is ground zero for sea-level rise," said Senator Bill Nelson, who hosted the hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Science and Space at Miami Beach City Hall. Part of a series of statewide meetings organized by Nelson, the hearing coincided with Earth Day. Florida had recorded between five and eight inches of sea level rise in the last 50 years, said Miami-born Nelson, noting that 75 percent of the state's population live near the coast.

Easter renewal It would be good for us to consider that Easter is not, or at least should not be, an exclusively Christian celebration. The ultimate purpose of Jesus Christ's ministry was to save humanity from the terrors of sin and death. It should be stressed over and over that Christ's triumph, as exemplified by his resurrection, was never intended to be narrowly sectarian. At this time of year especially, we should remember that we are all children of God — a God ready, willing and able to embrace all of creation.

LONDON (Reuters) - The European Commission will hold three meetings this summer on how to ensure the bloc's industries can compete in global markets while meeting goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it said on Wednesday. The meetings aim to gather views on rules determining if companies can continue to receive free carbon permits under the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) beyond 2020, when current measures expire. They will also include how EU governments can fund the development of new technologies to help drive deep cuts in the heat-trapping emissions blamed for warming the planet.

The celebrity power fueling " Years of Living Dangerously ," Showtime 's multipart, James Cameron - Arnold Schwarzenegger -Jerry Weintraub-produced documentary devoted to sounding alarms about climate change , is inevitably a double-edged sword. Big-name stars obviously call attention to a project that otherwise might be lost in the shuffle, but they also make it easy for deniers to dismiss the message because of the messengers (oh those silly tree-hugging Hollywood dilettantes -- though Schwarzenegger has right-wing street cred as a recent Republican governor)

BERLIN (Reuters) - A U.N. report about ways to fix global warming due on Sunday is likely to disappoint investors seeking clear-cut economic calculations about the benefits and costs of curbing rising greenhouse gas emissions. Authors say the report stops short of an economic bottom line since it is hard to put a value, for instance, on human lives lost to extreme weather or on risks of a faster melt of Greenland's ice sheet that would push up sea levels. The United States and other governments, at talks in Berlin, were pushing for clearer economic arguments from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)